Kumbakonam and the food poisoning

This week has been very colorful indeed! So Me, Tara and Sólveig were sent to Kumbakonam where we slept at Velanganni´s home. He is a retired school teacher and headmaster who is very nice and spent most of our stay there with us. Our project was to work at a school fpr the poor during the day teaching the kids English or just what ever we wanted to then in the evening we went to a village that had been hit by a cyclone. The villagers build their houses out of mud and the roofs are made of palm tree leaves so when the cyclone hit it completely destroyed their hoses and we could even see 5-10 meter high trees on their sides that have blown over, roots and all. It was quite incredible.
So these village people have managed to rebuild their houses (if you can call them houses) but because they are so poor the men in the village have a tendency to get drunk a lot of the time. There is one girl in the village that is 19 and she has offered to have what they call a tuition center where the kids can go after school and study so they don't have to be at home. This is where we went every day after we had been teaching at the school. 
The tuition center is just the ground out side this girls house and they didn't even have mats to sit on or a board to write on or any thing. So we bought bamboo mats for the kids to sit on and a board for the teacher.


So the first day at the school, to be considered a teacher and have to stand in front of 50 staring faces is easier said then done. But I think we did pretty good. We also taught them hokey poky which they found a blast! 
 When I was working at the school there where 7 teacher trainees there that didn't hesitate to use a stick to beat the children with. We were so shocked at this that we asked them why on earth they would do that, but they just went all shy and pretended not to understand us. We ended up talking to the headmaster about it and he took one of the sticks and threw it over the fence that surrounded the school yard. This, I´m afraid, did not stop the teachers from finding another stick to beat the children with. 
I soon found out here that Indians don't really like making a fool of them selves! That is something I don't seem to have a problem with. I was teaching the children hokey pokey and shaking my but all over the place and generally dancing like an idiot. The kids really loved this and in the end felt comfortable enough to join in. That was fantastic! Seeing all these kids shaking and dancing and laughing was so incredible. It looked like they had never felt so free in their life. We gave all the kids at the school pens to write with which they were very happy with. 
After the second day we were all three feeling a little weird in the stomach then I got a really high fever. From there on it deteriorated and I set up camp on the hole which Indians prefer to call a toilet. Sleeping on the floor and doing your business in a hole when you have food poisoning is something I do not recommend putting on your list to do before you die. After 2 days of this business we decided to go to Pondicherry so we could get to a bed and a western toilet! We hired a taxi for the 2 hour drive to Pondicherry and it cost us 1800 rupees which is 4500 kr! 2 hours! I pay that for taking a taxi from Reykjavík to Hafnafjörður sometimes. 
When we arrived in Pondicherry my cramps were getting worse and I ended up having to go to hospital. There I got injections and medicines. I put up a bit of a fuss when it came to the injections saying I wanted clean needles. They kept on going on at me ,,Madam, madam! needles clean okey I wipe them with paper'' Yeah right! It was not very convincing.  I just said to them. ,,If you want to use your needles you are going to have to consult my grandmother. She is a very respected nurse in Iceland who studied in Denmark. You are going to have to go threw her first or buy me new needles!'' In the end they didn't seem up to the challenge to talk to Amma so they ran down in to the basement where there was a pharmacy and bought me new needles and let me watch while they opened the packed. 
After the injections I felt a lot better. Now I am still at Pondicherry and tomorrow everyone is going for their next project but I think I am being sent to Chennai to recover properly before heading off to Kenya. 


Besides the food poisoning it's been a great week! I hope it will be easier to get to an internet cafe in kenya so I can blog more often! :)
-C

The first project

Oh lord there has so much happened the last few days! Me, Tara and Helga went to a girls home called Pasum Kudil and it was amazing. The girls are so nice and cheerful even though they have all gone through incredibly difficult stuff. Most of them have lost their parents or parent to AIDS. But they where so wonderful. I took pictures of them all so when I get home if someone wants to become a sponsor for one of the children I can show them pictures and tell you a little about their background.We staied with them for 3 days and it was surprisingly hard to say goodbye to all the girls, especially when they started saying to us ''don't forget me, please''.
As we were leaving I went to the bathroom (which was a hole in the floor) and to flush it you get a bucket and put some water in it then you just chuck it over the toilet. But I had my camera on me (I was not trying to take a photo of my self using the toilet!) and it fell in to the water bucket and is now ruined. So I have to wait for about 5 days to get a new one because there aren't any legit camera shops here. But the girls are taking loads of pictures for me.
We have all bought some Sarees but its so complected to put them on that we can't do it by our self. We 
At the moment we are in a mountain town where we are spending are ''weekend'' and have been doing tourist things all day. We lost an ice cream to a monkey and have been touring viewpoints and rose gardens. This country is so beautiful. We visited some rice fields out in the country side just as the sun was setting and it was so incredibly beautiful.
My next project starts on Saturday and is a children's home. I hope it's not going to be so hard to say goodbye to all the kids this time as it was last time.
I'm afraid I can't have the blog longer this time so I am going to have to sign off.
-C

Arriving in Chennai

So we have arrived in India... At last! took us 2 days to get here and 4 flights but it was worth it. John and Michael our sponsors here picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel. Which apparently isn't a hotel after all, its just open for people doing volunteer work or some kind of social work, founded by some priest.

The area we are staying in is also the main place for famous people and so on so it's quite ''nice'', but there's still rubbish every where you look and people sleeping right next to all the trash and stuff... but still... quite nice.

So we are in Chennai and our first project starts tomorrow after a 12 hour train ride which we will be taking this evening.

If I had to describe India in one word it would be Chaos followed buy Dirty! but the weather is great and the people are... weird but nice. The traffic here is utter chaos. There don't seem to be any rules and every one is constantly honking their horn. We were getting very annoyed by this so we asked John what the deal was and he said because the traffic was so chaotic they did it to keep each other alert and aware. Then we had to take one of those buggee things on three wheels, which are called autos. We had to go three and three in each auto and it was amazingly terrifying but we got to our destination unharmed, thank god. But men and car are as one here. There are no pavements so people are just walking along with the cars like it's the safest place in the world. I have not seen one person look to either side before crossing a road here. They just some how dive in to the traffic and come out the other side unharmed. But they never run! oh no, they would never take a risk like that.

Otherwise, besides the traffic I am quite liking it here. Believe it or not I have not yet done my business in a hole. I have managed to get to western type toilets every time, but I'm afraid that is going to change as soon as I get to the project tomorrow.

The food here is amazing so far. It's so good, which surprised me because I usually don't like Indian food. But this is nothing like the Indian food you get at restaurants at home. It's waay better!

I have only had one traumatic incident here so far and that was last night. I had drunk a huge bottle of water just before going to bed and woke up in the middle of the night bursting for a pee. As I opened the bathroom door and turned the light on I saw a huge lizard run up the wall beside the toilet. It was seriously about the size of my arm. If you can imagine it's nose starting at my fingertips and the tail ending at my elbow, that's about how big it was.  Of course I just jumped out of the bathroom and slammed the door waking up Solveig my room mate. She was way to tired to help me out so I just climbed back in to bed and held it in until morning. The when she woke up we made it our mission to go in to the bathroom to see if we could see it but it was long gone. We came to the conclusion that it had come in and gone out through the drain in the floor, even though we were on the third floor nota bene.

Other wise every thing is going really well and John is helping us like crazy. We would probably still be at the airport trying to find our way to the hotel if it wasn't for him. We took him out to dinner last night and we all dressed up in Indian dresses, but being Icelanders we of course managed to find the only Italian restaurant in the city or something! But Indian/Italian food is really good too.

I am going to have to sign off now seeing as I'm in a tiny internet shop in the corner of a really shabby mall and there are people waiting (it was b.t.w. incredibly hard to find an internet cafe).

I'll try to put in another blog soon!

-C